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So, finally, we have learned how the Labour Party proposes to stop the boats. They will:
- Seek a returns agreement with the EU in exchange for the UK taking a share of the asylum seekers reaching the EU
- Engage in more intelligence sharing with the EU, plus a new partnership with Europol
- Devise a new organised crime strategy to target traffickers by treating them as terrorists.
- Abandon the Rwanda scheme
- Reduce the asylum backlog overnight.
By implementing such a plan, the claim is that they will not only stop the boats but save the taxpayer £2bn per year.
Wow, we wonder what AI-bred super genius thought up such an astounding plan?
Will it work? [spoiler alert] Of course not. Leaving aside the fact that Brussels will effectively decide what our allocation of asylum seekers will be, and let’s not forget that nearly a million people sought asylum in the EU in 2022. It will be more in 2023.
Moreover, the number entering illegally this year will be around half a million. Looking at the years ahead these numbers are bound to grow. (See our article of the week below).
As for smashing the gangs; not that there’s the remotest chance of this happening; as the National Crime Agency has said, ‘trafficking networks are illusive, ramshackle and easily replicated. Take one down and another will quickly replace it.’
What of a returns’ agreement with the EU, with the quid pro quo of our taking in asylum seekers from them? NB, one calculation, given the size of our population, and based on 2022 data, put it at 120,000. All this will mean is that we will be back to the pre-Brexit scenario of each year being directed by Brussels to take in whatever our allocation has been set at. The boats would continue to come because we’ll, more or less, be back in the position we are in now, unable to return everyone who comes illegally, fully signed up to the ECHR and, no doubt, falling within the ambit of the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
As for ending the backlog at a stroke, this implies an amnesty, because there will be no other way of clearing the backlog overnight. Far from solving the problem, the strength of the magnet will increase immeasurably, overnight.
And what of those asylum seekers we would be agreeing to take in? They would still be coming to a country with a huge housing shortage, NHS queues, chock-a-block GP surgeries and congested roads. Where will they be housed? Hotels? Converted military camps? Tents?
The problem with plans such as this is that the clever people who devise them have little understanding of immigration and invariably look at the present without any thought given to the future. As if there is a finite number of migrants; get them all in quickly and, Bob’s your uncle, job done.
This is a preview of Migration Watch’s free weekly newsletter. You can read the full version here.
Please consider signing up to the newsletter directly, you can do so here and will receive an email copy of the newsletter every Friday as soon as it is released.